UK Mosque/Masjid Directory

Notes on the principles

Comprehensive & Accurate. The information comes from publicly available sources including various directories including ones whose
data is supplied by the public on-line and not checked, local authority published information about local minority-group facilities, etc.

Feedback. If you do find any omissions or inaccurate information, please use the link available when viewing a Masjid. Jazacullah-khairan.
Note that the contributors have taken a lot of trouble to correct as much data as possible, so please check data for your local masaajid -
you may have corrections for us, but you may find that our data is more accurate!

Location Accuracy. Most locations have been determined using the postcode to generate co-ordinates, which will point to the street and for longer streets
the right section and side of the road. With the building number you should be able to find each place.
The data is slowly being updated with precise locations instead, i.e. pinpointing the building.
We are starting to add accuracy indicators, e.g. "Accurate to within 2 metres." means that the foot of the pointer lies precisely inside the masjid building.
"Accurate to within 2000 metres." means we haven't really got a clue where it is, but someone told us there is a masjid around here somewhere.

Factions. The map highlights different factional interests among Muslims by colouring masjid icons according to some fairly broad mainstream categories,
'Bareilvi', 'Deobandi' etc. This is euphemistically defined as the masjid's 'Theme', and you may find this contentious.
It is a point of principle among most conscientious Muslims that the community is a single entity.
While that is a noble sentiment, it is patently obvious that there are clear divisions between Muslims and between masaajid,
based on religious and ethnic differences.
While many Muslims are content to use any masjid, many others make careful choices about where to go.
And for those who would like a change, the information will help you pick somewhere different.

Notes on the information displayed for each Masjid

Where available, the following is shown: name, full address, phone number, capacity, theme, management, whether it is only, or not, used for Jumma, and whether or not there are facilities for ladies.

Name: Where many names are used for the same masjid, or where other organisations connected to the masjid share the sdame address, all are listed. This will aid searching.

Address: This is obvious, but it also includes references to corrected street names, some of which have persisted for decades in other listings. Note especially the postcode, which is the greatest source of errors.

Constituency, Ward and Borough: It is possible to search on these terms, which may assist community organisations, and may assist Muslims when lobbying politicians. However this information is far from complete. Note the postcode and use it to check www.gigateway.org.uk/areasearch/default.html for accurate geo-political data.

Phone: Phone numbers have been taken from a variety of published sources, but many of them are very old and very wrong, and we accept no liability for errors. Please accept our apologies for continuing to propagate wrong numbers and please inform us so that they can be corrected. We are slowly checking through these to correct them ourselves.

Capacity: This is taken from public sources. Masaajid have few incentives for providing incorrect data here, other than laziness. If they overstate, they risk an unhappy confrontation with planning and safety officials. If they understate, they may discourage new users.

Theme: (See also notes on the principles, above.) Any masjid is certain to have users who follow different practices, and this is something to appreciate (unlike other religions which are unshakably denominationsl). However where a doctrine dominates, that will clearly influence what is practised at that location.

Deobandi - covers Tablighi Jama'at of course. Deobandis are divided about the importance of Sufism and generally play it down, so we have used 'Sufi' only for those places that are keen to promote Tassawuf.

Deobandi or Bareilvi - sounds like an impossible combination, but actually the underlying differences are not as great as their protagonists would have us believe. Many masaajid in the Bangladeshi community are comfortable with both.

Bareilvi or Sufi - Note that some Sufis disdain Bareilvi-ism and many Bareilvis practise little Tassawuf.

Salafi - There are numerous varieties of Islamic practice even in the same masjid, so this distinction is not homogeneous.

Maudoodi - This describes all the masaajid under managements that strongly identify with Jama'at Islami in Pakistan or its associated organisations in the UK.

Arabic mainstream - This describes generally the small number among the larger masaajid that have significant numbers of Arabic-speaking users and staff.

Shi'a - Includes 'Twelvers', Bohras and Ismailis.

Students - This includes student-run prayer rooms on college campuses. Obviously many of these will require access to college premises first.

Other/Unknown - Attribution of a masjid to a 'theme' is only done where this is obvious from published affiliations or promotion of associated practices by the masjid's management. Otherwise the masjid is marked as 'Other' even though many of its users are affiliated with a particular trend. No masjid is completely ecumenical.

Qadiani - Nowhere in the world are Qadianis ('Ahmadiyya') considered to be Muslims. However there are a couple of places where visitors will see ornate oriental architecture and a street sign pointing to 'The Mosque', which unfortunately turns out to be a Qadiani building. Imagine being in a hurry for Jumu'ah and finding yourself by mistake in there! Hence Qadiani locations are displayed and marked as such. Why have we labelled them as mosques/masaajid? Basically to avoid the confusion of coding for different types of location, but also because the buildings themselves are innocent. Woking Masjid was under Qadiani control during the 1960s - it would be sad to have stopped calling it a masjid just because of the people in it at that time. Furthermore, the Qadiani lobby is such that many local and central government officials believe them to be a significant group. The map highlights just how few they really are.

Management: It would be Islamically immoral to label masaajid as 'belonging' to a given ethnicity, yet this is the reality of most masaajid. Many were set up as centres for a particular community and it is important for that community to have somewhere where events, speeches and madressah teaching are in the mother-tongue. However it would be useful to have an 'ethnicity index', in which a masjid scores 1 for each committee member of a different ethnicity. Meanwhile we have highlighted masjid monoculture by naming the management's dominant ethnicity.

Ladies: If the masjid claims to have facilities for ladies, this is stated and also shown by the 'w' for women on its icon. If it categorically hasn't, this is stated too, otherwise, if not known, no comment is added.

Jumu'ah: Some places are used only for Jumu'ah salaah, eg hired halls, and some small masaajid have jumu'ah elsewhere. Special instructions for jumu'ah are noted if there are any.

Notes: Some of our address lists date back to the late 1970s and for some of those, even the street no longer exists! So we have started to include a Confidence indicator. This is rated A to F, with roughly the following meanings.

A: Reasonably recent first hand knowledge of the masjid. (A place that is now defunct is 'A' if we've seen for ourselves it no longer exists.)

B: Well established masjid with plenty of corroborating information to support our data.

C: Well established masjid with a single source of information to support our data.

D: Several sources of information about the masjid, but none of them recent and reliable.

E: Limited information about the masjid, from an old or unreliable source.

F: Treat with caution - this place may not exist any longer. Or, "We've heard a rumour that there is a masjid around here somewhere."

Last updated 23/09/08.

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